Condition Deadeye Balance - Repeater should be reverted to cost two initiative in PvE

[Lucinellia.9247]

Following the June 8th patch, condition Deadeye is in a bad place in instanced PvE. I won't labour all of the changes that have been made that have ended up with cDE being worse than before the 11th May patch - I have left plenty of comments in other threads which explain in detail why cDE is now very much non-competitive against other condition options. See my comments here, here and here if you are interested. Instead I am going to focus on one substantially major and negatively impactful change - Repeater now costing three initiative.

 

It is worth stressing that cDE, regardless of its DPS, has the following issues due to how it is currently designed:
 

1. Lack of cleave.
2. Heavily reliant on boons from other players.
3. Heavily reliant on conditions applied to a target.
4. Lack of utility.
5. Lack of support.
6. Lack of crowd control.
7. Lack of target switching, despite being single target DPS.
8. Issues completing rotation in any fight with adds due to body blocking (this is the same issue that Rifle DE still struggles with).
9. A highly punishing rotation that is difficult to recover from and can involve extensive movement of the player character.

 

These are an awful lot of restrictions when compared with some of the other DPS options currently available! So, surely, cDE should be doing respectable DPS?

Unfortunately, it is not. Condition Deadeye DPS and damage is in a very poor place.

 

The outcome of the 8th June balance patch appears to be a 3K DPS nerf from preliminary testing, both to opening burst and also to sustained damage. This will place cDE around 35k DPS, with allies, in a situation without unrealistic venom prestacking. This DPS is not only lower than Scourge but also lower than Firebrand and substantially lower than Renegade (even the Righteous Rebel variant which can bring alacrity!). All of these alternative builds can bring a range of support, cleave and utility. Condition Deadeye cannot.

 

One of the reasons why condition Deadeye cannot do any of these is due to the current cost of the Shadow Strike flip-over skill, Repeater, in PvE. 

 

Repeater is an essential component of the condition Deadeye rotation, used to build Malice which regenerates Initiative via the essential trait, Maleficent Seven. The previous cost of Repeater was two initiative. With this setup, a condition Deadeye could include Cloak and Dagger in their rotation, allowing for Stealth access not tied to a utility or Stolen Skill. 

 

However, the cost of Repeater was changed in the 25th May balance update to be three initiative. This is a substantial restriction within PvE content where skills will be looped into a rotation to deal continuous damage. A rotation segment that previously had a cost of 6 initiative on Repeater to generate Malice jumped to 9 initiative. In order for a condition Deadeye to be able to do a DPS rotation in content that does not have very frequent phases then a certain loadout of One in the Chamber, Malicious Restoration, Mercy and Shadow Meld is necessitated. This is an incredibly restrictive skill selection, particularly for a DPS option that now does so little DPS and does not offer much else.

 

Therefore, an easy change that would benefit Thief build diversity (since, as it stands, cDE is not a good option) is to revert the cost of Repeater in PvE from three initiative to two. This would have substantial benefits both for overall balance and also for what Thief players are able to bring to fights*.

 

Doing so would mean that a PvE Deadeye can choose their preferred heal skill and may not need One in the Chamber as they can now access Stealth to complete their rotation via Cloak and Dagger again. This solves some of the current problems with cDE having a very punishing rotation in terms of execution for comparatively little DPS.

 

With two initiative Repeater overall damage can be increased with either Caltrops or Thousand Needles instead of Mercy. This also provides some cleave. Crowd control can be increased via Basilisk Venom instead of Shadow Meld, all because initiative can now be spent on Cloak and Dagger for Stealth. Changing back to two initiative on Repeater would allow for improved Thief build diversity in PvE. Without it, cDE will remain a difficult to play low DPS option that brings no additional utility or crowd control and is outclassed by a high number of alternative condition damage builds which bring so much more to a group and to an encounter. 

Playing cDE now is very punishing for no gains. It is high risk, with no reward. Changing Repeater back to two initiative in PvE would help alleviate a plethora of problems associated with condition Deadeye following the 8th June balance update. No other changes would necessarily be needed either due to the ability for a Deadeye to not be locked into certain utility skills.

Thank you for coming to my second TED talk on this issue. I hope to be able to stop these TED talks when Arenanet are able to sensibly consider Deadeye balance and perhaps try interacting with players to canvass views, opinions and analysis on harsh and unmerited balance alterations. 

*Alternatively, I suppose the idea is just to force Thief players to condition Daredevil - a very simple and unengaging build which is now benchmarking at over 40k, more than cDE when it was deemed a problem, while having the option for CC and also utility via Stolen Skills, including Detonate Plasma. That isn't helpful for Thief build diversity though!

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Totally agreed with the above. 

[babazhook.6805]

I find when they say things like "we want to increase thief build diversity" the exact opposite happens. Build diversity is worse then before.

[frareanselm.1925]

anet devs dont play condi teef in pve, so they balance blindly

[Lucinellia.9247]

5 hours ago, frareanselm.1925 said:

anet devs dont play condi teef in pve, so they balance blindly

Almost certainly, sadly.

 

However, there were plenty of us that do play condi Thief builds who gave feedback on the balance preview (we all indicated cDE would be far too strong but I don't think Anet considered cDE at all) before the 11th of May patch and have been constantly providing feedback since then.

 

I think Anet would do well to listen to the points that many of us are making instead of balancing blindly and getting themselves into silly situations. Silly situations where the single target, highly limited, highly challenging cDPS option for Thief is doing 35k and the incredibly simple auto attack chain, dodge, use Death Blossom, repeat, build is doing 40k while bringing CC and utility to the point where it can be stacked on Mursaat Overseer and cover all boons aside from Alacrity due to Detonate Plasma. The situation while comparing to non-Thief builds is even worse with Mirage continuing to be oppressively strong on bosses where Confusion works and Renegade, Scourge and Firebrand being grossly overtuned for the additional toolkit they have access to.

 

Something that is more challenging to play and brings less support and utility should not do lower DPS than something which is easier and has far higher utility.

 

Please listen to the community more Arenanet. Many of us clearly love the game, want to enjoy playing it and want to keep playing it but that is hard when the balance is so poorly thought out and professions that people love get nerfed to ignominy because the developers on the balance team do not fully understand a build and don't listen to feedback or actively seek it out.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

To be honest, ANet could keep all the other changes they've made in the last two weeks and that would be fine. They could even split it and keep the 3 ini in WvW/PvP if they wanted, it still plays fine there, it really hurts the fluidity of the set in PvE though. 

[Lucinellia.9247]

9 hours ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

To be honest, ANet could keep all the other changes they've made in the last two weeks and that would be fine. They could even split it and keep the 3 ini in WvW/PvP if they wanted, it still plays fine there, it really hurts the fluidity of the set in PvE though. 

I absolutely agree.

 

Keeping all of the other changes (speaking only from a PvE perspective) would be punishing and it would still leave cDE a worse option than many other condition DPS choices. However, the fluidity of gameplay would be vastly improved by a return to 2 initiative Repeater and doing so would allow for condition Deadeyes to compensate a little for the DPS nerfs via Caltrops or Thousand Needles or simply vary to a different rotation depending on what is happening with the encounter.

 

Condi Deadeye wouldn't be amazing after the outcome of the changes and it would only be very slightly more viable than before the 11th of May patch. But, relatively, it would be fixed by 2 initiative Repeater and Anet could simply leave cDE alone at that point and focus on some of the much more pressing balance outliers (Scourge, Renegade, cFB,  Mirage, cDD).

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

6 hours ago, Lucinellia.9247 said:

I absolutely agree.

 

Keeping all of the other changes (speaking only from a PvE perspective) would be punishing and it would still leave cDE a worse option than many other condition DPS choices. However, the fluidity of gameplay would be vastly improved by a return to 2 initiative Repeater and doing so would allow for condition Deadeyes to compensate a little for the DPS nerfs via Caltrops or Thousand Needles or simply vary to a different rotation depending on what is happening with the encounter.

 

Condi Deadeye wouldn't be amazing after the outcome of the changes and it would only be very slightly more viable than before the 11th of May patch. But, relatively, it would be fixed by 2 initiative Repeater and Anet could simply leave cDE alone at that point and focus on some of the much more pressing balance outliers (Scourge, Renegade, cFB,  Mirage, cDD).

You know, I've been thinking about this and part of the reason that 3 ini feels fine in PvE/WvW is that you're not usually building for quickness in those situations. In an organised fractal/raid group you're going to be looking at permanent quickness and alactrity uptime, and both quickness and alacrity have no effect on the passive initiative regen rate. This means that if you can't spare the initiative for Cloak and Dagger to dump your malice you burn through your stealth cooldowns too fast. Add to that the loss of Malicious Intent because you're forced to take One in the Chamber for the stolen skills, then that plus the quickness issue accounts for the disparity between how each mode feels.

 

I know you probably know that, but it just clicked in my head, so thought it was worth mentioning. 

Edited June 13, 2021 by Jugglemonkey.8741

[Lucinellia.9247]

Yes, the Quickness issue is really quite something! Condition Deadeye is incredibly sensitive to both Quickness and Alacrity in PvE. In PvP and WvW it is not so sensitive as you will probably want to use other skills outside of Shadow Strike and Repeater at points, and any of these hitting alleviates the issues. The cycling through skills is also, generally, quite a bit slower than a PvE rotation.

 

Quickness is fully needed to safely move through the Repeater section of the rotation. Without it, the Repeater flip-over can be lost without reaching seven Malice if you have poor latency, need to execute a mechanic, move, dodge, reposition or get knocked down or interrupted. However, Quickness also speeds up the rotation which means more frequent stealth access is required. This means more Stolen Skills over the duration of a fight which also makes condition Deadeye incredibly dependent on Alacrity. Without it, you could barely complete a golem benchmark (without allies) before the most recent patch. I imagine it would only be worse now. 

 

It really is incredibly odd game design that a profession which is so reliant on allies for boons and conditions, reliant on allies for the application of venoms and yet is limited to restrained single-target DPS without CC and with an incredibly punishing rotation is left to wallow in DPS beneath that of stronger and more versatile condition DPS options.

[Xeon.5768]

What you explained 

On 6/8/2021 at 3:11 PM, Lucinellia.9247 said:

Following the June 8th patch, condition Deadeye is in a bad place in instanced PvE. I won't labour all of the changes that have been made that have ended up with cDE being worse than before the 11th May patch - I have left plenty of comments in other threads which explain in detail why cDE is now very much non-competitive against other condition options. See my comments here, here and here if you are interested. Instead I am going to focus on one substantially major and negatively impactful change - Repeater now costing three initiative.

 

It is worth stressing that cDE, regardless of its DPS, has the following issues due to how it is currently designed:
 

1. Lack of cleave.
2. Heavily reliant on boons from other players.
3. Heavily reliant on conditions applied to a target.
4. Lack of utility.
5. Lack of support.
6. Lack of crowd control.
7. Lack of target switching, despite being single target DPS.
8. Issues completing rotation in any fight with adds due to body blocking (this is the same issue that Rifle DE still struggles with).
9. A highly punishing rotation that is difficult to recover from and can involve extensive movement of the player character.

 

These are an awful lot of restrictions when compared with some of the other DPS options currently available! So, surely, cDE should be doing respectable DPS?

Unfortunately, it is not. Condition Deadeye DPS and damage is in a very poor place.

 

The outcome of the 8th June balance patch appears to be a 3K DPS nerf from preliminary testing, both to opening burst and also to sustained damage. This will place cDE around 35k DPS, with allies, in a situation without unrealistic venom prestacking. This DPS is not only lower than Scourge but also lower than Firebrand and substantially lower than Renegade (even the Righteous Rebel variant which can bring alacrity!). All of these alternative builds can bring a range of support, cleave and utility. Condition Deadeye cannot.

 

 

I agree with a lot of your bullet points and the general comparisons of cDE with other classes. However, dps-wise I dont know how you drew the conclusion that "its damage is in a very poor place". Maybe you can elaborate more with DPS logs here.

 

In my daily static or pugs runs, this class is still doing almost always god-tier top 1 dps in fractal CM100. And yes as you mentioned it brings no CC, but the extra supreme dps it brings to the group is massive that no other members should consider rejecting it as a dps class.

In CM99 and 98, with precasting of 3 venom skills at the mistlock, it is still more OP than almost all other pwr classes in burst opener (e.g. 80-120k on skrov, and bear in mind its precast requires a little effort, unlike the pre-patch pwr DH/weaver, not mentioning the precasts of these two have been almost destroyed due to channeling skills disabled during build temp swap). 

 

In raids, cDE has more restrictions on positioning but still its performance is excellent (just may not be not top 1 depending on the situations). At the current patch, in general condition classes can do quite well for even pwr-oriented encounters (such as VG, deimos) in pugs, where phase time is relatively long. Surely in an elitist group, pwr classes will still be used for pwr-oriented encounters, but for vast majority of the weekly pugs, condition classes are just very acceptable in any encounters right now.

 

You can claim for more CC or self-boons sustain to be added, but not DPS, according to my recent raid/fractal experience with this class. Or if we follow the main idea of Anet's recent patches, smoothing its burst significantly and buffing the sustain dps accordingly is also a way to go.

[Xeon.5768]

On 6/12/2021 at 3:02 AM, frareanselm.1925 said:

anet devs dont play condi teef in pve, so they balance blindly

Unfortunately this is true for many other classes/builds, not only theif.

Not all other classes are like guardian, as you know. The recent balance of guardian regarding Ashes of the Just just indicates Anet really has a good understanding of this class, which is not the case for most other classes/builds.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Xeon.5768

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Somes are so dramatic. The repeater/m7 is still spammable for ages despit the nerf on initiatives , it just needs some tweak for example with Mercy, Hide in Shadow, and alacrity is mandatory for F1 and Shadowmeld that's true but deadeye sensitive to quickness/alacrity ? Yeah, like every classes ? I don't get this point particulary.

I have seen very great Cdeadeyes in fractals, doing better than power builds after 2-3sec and not only for sunpeak CM but on the 2 others,  or mai-trin, molten bosses etc.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the nerf on initiative cost; yes rotation is a bit more complicated and wrong management can really slow your dps in pve. Yet it is very strong.

But the nerf mostly impacts core/daredevil in pve as it's no longer a fun option for midrange or OW, you'll have to switch to deadeye, and pvp/wvw modes obviously where the meme Cdeadeye is worst than pre patch.

 

 

Yes Deadeye/thiefs have a lot of issues, but we don't need to answer to all one by one, they're all linked somewhat ; some changes in some aspects would be enough to be viable and rub out issues on others.

I don't think Deadeye needs more DPS or less initiative cost. Rifle was already kitten strong years ago and no one cares about this aspect.  It needs IMO a bit more cleave/utilities and buffs.

The "revealed training" could be a group buff.

Fire for Effect could be minor trai or adept/master trait, it would already help to be worth/less selfish.

And a skill like Epidemic, or spectral grasp (instead of scorpion wire in pve) could be helpful. Etc.

[Lucinellia.9247]

8 hours ago, Xeon.5768 said:

What you explained 

I agree with a lot of your bullet points and the general comparisons of cDE with other classes. However, dps-wise I dont know how you drew the conclusion that "its damage is in a very poor place". Maybe you can elaborate more with DPS logs here.

 

In my daily static or pugs runs, this class is still doing almost always god-tier top 1 dps in fractal CM100. And yes as you mentioned it brings no CC, but the extra supreme dps it brings to the group is massive that no other members should consider rejecting it as a dps class.

In CM99 and 98, with precasting of 3 venom skills at the mistlock, it is still more OP than almost all other pwr classes in burst opener (e.g. 80-120k on skrov, and bear in mind its precast requires a little effort, unlike the pre-patch pwr DH/weaver, not mentioning the precasts of these two have been almost destroyed due to channeling skills disabled during build temp swap). 

 

In raids, cDE has more restrictions on positioning but still its performance is excellent (just may not be not top 1 depending on the situations). At the current patch, in general condition classes can do quite well for even pwr-oriented encounters (such as VG, deimos) in pugs, where phase time is relatively long. Surely in an elitist group, pwr classes will still be used for pwr-oriented encounters, but for vast majority of the weekly pugs, condition classes are just very acceptable in any encounters right now.

 

You can claim for more CC or self-boons sustain to be added, but not DPS, according to my recent raid/fractal experience with this class. Or if we follow the main idea of Anet's recent patches, smoothing its burst significantly and buffing the sustain dps accordingly is also a way to go.

 

Regarding your first point, I think it is worth considering a boss where condi Deadeye was considered good, and then seeing how the DPS has changed from pre-11th May patch until now. I suppose Dhuum is a good case in point here as cDE should be very competitive here as it doesn't need to take CC, there is only one target and the rotation can be executed reasonably. It, of course, is not going to be best sample size but it is better than simply projecting numbers. For this, we can check https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/raid/dhuum

 

Top end cDE DPS prior to the 11th May patch was 15.7k. Comparatively, Chronomancer was at 18k and Renegade at 17k. Scourge was at 14k.

cDE DPS as of the 8th June hotfix is now at 13.4k. cDD is now at 14k while Renegade is at 16.1k and Scourge is at 16.4k. This sample is only a week worth of kills, but it should illustrate the point. Even in a fight that plays to the strengths of cDE by reducing the number of targets and not requiring CC, it is doing worse DPS than other options which bring more utility.

 

It is worth keeping an eye on this to see how cDE is doing on bosses where it was typically considered strong and see how the numbers play out.

 

Regarding prestacking of Mistlocks, I have mentioned that as being an issue in my other threads that I linked in my first post. I do not think that should be a thing and I believe all boons and buffs should be removed on initiating a fight. Without it though, cDE will be entirely useless in fractals. Do keep in mind that cDD also benefits from the venom prestacking and is competitive with cDE on pretty much every Fractal encounter aside from Ai while having a simpler rotation, is not restricted by target swapping and can bring CC without a weapon swap to pistol. Anyway, Wingman is worth checking to see how the opening burst of cDE looks compared with properly played DHs and Slbs.  Suffice to say, power burst can be a lot higher.

I am not sure why you feel additional DPS should not be warranted. I suggest you look at how cDE is actually performing relative to the other professions since the 8th of June. You can use Wingman for this. Even an encounter where cDE should be strong, such as Cairn, the record DPS is almost 10k lower than Renegade and approximately 6k lower than cDD.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Lucinellia.9247

[Lucinellia.9247]

2 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

Somes are so dramatic. The repeater/m7 is still spammable for ages despit the nerf on initiatives , it just needs some tweak for example with Mercy, Hide in Shadow, and alacrity is mandatory for F1 and Shadowmeld that's true but deadeye sensitive to quickness/alacrity ? Yeah, like every classes ? I don't get this point particulary.

I have seen very great Cdeadeyes in fractals, doing better than power builds after 2-3sec and not only for sunpeak CM but on the 2 others,  or mai-trin, molten bosses etc.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the nerf on initiative cost; yes rotation is a bit more complicated and wrong management can really slow your dps in pve. Yet it is very strong.

But the nerf mostly impacts core/daredevil in pve as it's no longer a fun option for midrange or OW, you'll have to switch to deadeye, and pvp/wvw modes obviously where the meme Cdeadeye is worst than pre patch.

 

 

Yes Deadeye/thiefs have a lot of issues, but we don't need to answer to all one by one, they're all linked somewhat ; some changes in some aspects would be enough to be viable and rub out issues on others.

I don't think Deadeye needs more DPS or less initiative cost. Rifle was already kitten strong years ago and no one cares about this aspect.  It needs IMO a bit more cleave/utilities and buffs.

The "revealed training" could be a group buff.

Fire for Effect could be minor trai or adept/master trait, it would already help to be worth/less selfish.

And a skill like Epidemic, or spectral grasp (instead of scorpion wire in pve) could be helpful. Etc.

 

Yes, that is indeed the issue. If you want to be able to execute a simple DPS rotation - not min-max the numbers, simply execute it - you need to give up all of your free utility slots (as venoms are mandatory to get anywhere near competitive damage). That is a considerable cost! The sensitivity to alacrity and quickness is much more pronounced than with other professions, as explained in my previous post. If you don't believe me, do try and complete a golem benchmark of cDE without alacrity or try an actual fight without quickness. With one you will run out of stealth access, in the other situation you end up initiative starved.

 

I am not sure where these claims of cDE being really strong are coming from. I'm one of the few people clinging to playing it in fractals, and you will be outclassed by someone on another profession that knows what they are doing on any raid encounter and any fractal encounter aside from Dark Ai. And these other professions do not need to fight against the limitations that cDE has! A great example of the warped thinking around cDE is evident by the top end DPS reported on Wingman for Siaxx at 59k. This is from a DH. cDE is at 32k. That isn't exactly competing and an initial spike for 2-3 seconds into an encounter does not save cDE in terms of overall DPS. If it did, it wouldn't be almost 8k DPS behind the best performing profession on Skorvald.

 

Do keep in mind that, as I have already outlined, single target damage is all that cDE could have going for it. It doesn't bring support, utility or cleave like Scourge or cFB, it doesn't have the raw numbers of Renegade or cDD and it certainly is nowhere close to Mirage (which clearly remains an outlier). It doesn't have nice groups buffs like Soulbeast, either (I guess this relates to my last comment!).

 

Rifle is very strong on a single target golem benchmark but you are indeed correct. No one cares too much about Rifle Deadeye and nor is it taken to many fights unless the fights are unique in favouring Rifle Deadeye. This is because the rotation is single target, Rifle Deadeye cannot easily switch targets, contains an annoying movement limitation, requires a high number of utility skills to be taken to execute the rotation, cannot offer much in the way of cleave or AoE (though some builds at least have more than cDE!) and is incredibly dependent on boons and conditions from allies. Many of these issues are exactly the same as cDE and the prominence of Rifle Deadeye should be a good indicator as to why those same issues negatively impact cDE.

 

*I agree strongly with your final point. A group buff would be nice and something like Revealed Training giving X stats or Y effect to allies when it is triggered on the Thief would be a very nice way of doing things! I am not sure it would resolve some of the other issues of cDE, mainly the lack of CC, and it would also grant the unique buff to cDD which already has Stolen Skills, but it would be a start!

Fire for Effect being more accessible would be amazing - even in its currently broken state that would be a nice change. Alternatively, Iron Sight applying some small +stat effect to allies while the Marked target is being attacked would be a possibly nice DE exclusive buff. Sadly though, I don't see much more effort being put into cDE with EoD in development. Here is to hoping that some of your, very nice, ideas are incorporated into an EoD elite spec for Thief.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Lucinellia.9247

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

  

23 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

Somes are so dramatic. The repeater/m7 is still spammable for ages despit the nerf on initiatives , it just needs some tweak for example with Mercy, Hide in Shadow, and alacrity is mandatory for F1 and Shadowmeld that's true but deadeye sensitive to quickness/alacrity ? Yeah, like every classes ? I don't get this point particulary.

I have seen very great Cdeadeyes in fractals, doing better than power builds after 2-3sec and not only for sunpeak CM but on the 2 others,  or mai-trin, molten bosses etc.

Just gonna answer this bit as it was me that brought it up, I think the other points have been sufficiently covered by the OP. 

 

I'm not saying that thief is sensitive to alacrity/quickness, although what Lucinellia said about running out of ini or stealth cooldowns if coverage isn't perfect is still correct. What I was saying is actually kinda the opposite, that alacrity doesn't improve the base initiative refresh rate, which means every other class can use weapon skills more times per minute but thief's weapon skills get no benefit from alacrity whatsoever. This gets significant when you have quickness because that speeds up the cast times of your rotation, increasing your initiative cost per minute, but you're not getting initiative back any faster. This means with the increased initiative cost of Repeater you will get initiative starved by having quickness in PvE that much faster, but because you don't build for quickness in WvW on P/D condi it's less of an issue. I'll break it down a bit in case it's still not clear why that is. 

 

Build:

I'm going to use the build from this video;

 

 

Build link;

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PaABoipjlZUwU6YHhMkUmJO2W+vPA-zRJYmRzfZEXR1RiK8BRc1ALM4tGF8gB-e

 

Rotation:

You gain one malice for striking a target with a weapon skill that costs initiative, two malice if it crits. So if you're using Shadow Strike and Repeater to build malice you will want to use the rotation of Shadow Strike, 2x Repeater, then Cloak and Dagger for stealth to get max malice and gain stealth ready to dump those malice stacks into Malicious Sneak Attack. 

 

Rotation time:

Shadow Strike has an extremely low cast time, it's not instant but it's no more than 0.2s and the game/wiki don't actually record a cast time for the skill. We want to work out the rotation time closest to the nearest second in order to determine the initiative gain per rotation cycle, so we will consider the cast time of Shadow Strike negligible for now. Repeater takes 1.25s to cast, Cloak and Dagger takes 0.5s to cast, and Malicious Sneak Attack takes 1s to cast, so the whole thing will take 1.25+1.25+.5+1=4 seconds per rotation. Quickness increases attack and action speeds by 50% so with quickness the rotation takes 2 seconds, but then you're getting revealed by attacking from stealth so the real rotation speed is going to be 3s with quickness because of the reveal timer. 

 

Let's look at how that plays out with Repeater costing both 2 and 3 initiative.

 

Repeater costs 2 initiative:

Getting to max malice triggers the Maleficent 7 trait which restores 7 initiative. So during the rotation you will spend 4+2+2=8 initiative on Shadow Strike and Repeater, gain 7 initiative from M7, then spend 5 initiative for stealth with Cloak and Dagger. Your rotation takes 4s without quickness so you will gain 4 initiative in that time, so if you subtract the initiative restored from the initiative spent you effectively spend ((4+2+2+5)-(7+4))=2 initiative per rotation without quickness, 3 initiative per rotation with quickness because of the reduced rotation time. 

 

Repeater costs 3 initiative:

Again, you will spend 4+3+3=10 initiative on Shadow Strike and Repeater, gain 7 initiative from M7, then spend 5 initiative on Cloak and Dagger. Your rotation still takes 4s without quickness, meaning you gain 4 initiative passively in that time, so subtracting the initiative restored from the initiative spent you will effectively spend ((4+3+3+5)-(7+4))=4 initiative per rotation, 5 initiative per rotation with quickness because of the reduced rotation time.

 

Initiative cost per minute when Repeater costs 2 initiative:

Now remember that without quickness the rotation time is 4s, and with quickness it's 3s, so you'd get 15 cycles per minute without quickness costing 2 initiative per cycle, and 20 cycles per minute with quickness costing 3 initiative per cycle. This means you'd effectively spend 30 initiative per minute without quickness, and 60 initiative per minute with quickness.

 

Initiative cost per minute when Repeater costs 3 initiative:

 

Taking 15 cycles per minute without quickness costing 4 initiative per cycle, and 20 cycles per minute with quickness costing 5 initiative per cycle means you'd effectively spend 60 initiative per minute without quickness, and 100 initiative per minute with quickness. 

 

So you can see that quickness basically doubles the amount of initiative you use per minute, while alacrity has zero effect on passive initiative regen. This is why I said earlier that the combination of quickness and alacrity affects thieves in a different way to other professions. Now so far I haven't said anything particularly breath taking, since quickness increases your action speed by 50% you could pretty much have worked that much out without doing any of the above. The thing to remember is that doubling the initiative cost per minute also impacts the ability to stealth.

 

So far I've assumed that you only use Cloak and Dagger to stealth. So what happens if you use One in the Chamber and Shadow Meld to stealth with stolen items?

 

Initiative gained/saved per minute using One in the Chamber:

Using a stolen skill to stealth saves 5 initiative, and using One in the Chamber gives you a stolen skill every time you use Shadow Meld on top of the one you get from using Mark, and Shadow Meld itself is a source of stealth. Assuming permanent alacrity from your Renegade, Mark has a cooldown of 17.4 seconds and Shadow Meld has a cooldown of 36s, meaning that you'd get roughly 5 stolen skills per minute, so that's 7 stealth sources per minute when you add the stealth from Shadow Meld. That's 7 times per minute you wouldn't have to use Cloak and Dagger to stealth, saving you 35 initiative. Over the course of a minute, you're going to regenerate 60 initiative passively as well as 6 initiative from three uses of Kleptomaniac, so adding that to the 35 initiative you save from not using Cloak and Dagger for stealth, that's essentially 101 initiative gained/saved per minute when using One in the Chamber. 

 

So taking the initiative costs per minute we worked out earlier, you can then subtract that from the 101 initiative gained per minute we just calculated to see the effects of quickness better. 

 

Pre patch:

Overall initiative costs per minute when Repeater costs 2 initiative without quickness:

A cost of 30 initiative per minute and a total regen/saving of 101 initiative per minute is going to leave you with a surplus regen of 71 initiative per minute. Veeeeeeery comfortable. 

 

Overall initiative costs per minute when Repeater costs 2 initiative with quickness:

A cost of 60 initiative per minute and a total regen/saving of 101 initiative per minute is going to leave you with a surplus regen of 41 initiative per minute. Still pretty comfortable. 

 

Post patch:

Overall initiative costs per minute when Repeater costs 3 initiative without quickness:

A cost of 60 initiative per minute and a total regen/saving of 101 initiative per minute is going to leave you with a surplus regen of 41 initiative per minute. Still comfortable, but the same as the cost was pre patch with quickness. 

 

Overall initiative costs per minute when Repeater costs 2 initiative with quickness:

A cost of 100 initiative per minute and a total regen/saving of 101 initiative per minute is going to leave you with a surplus regen of 1 initiative per minute. Ouch.

 

This incidentally is what the OP is talking about: you now have to play PERFECTLY to maintain your rotation: one missed stealth, one interrupted skill because you didn't have stability, one dodge meaning you don't get to dump malice before leaving stealth which costs another stealth source, and your DPS tanks. In order to make this playable, you are forced to swap your heal to either Hide in Shadows or Malicious Restoration and to drop a venom for Mercy to get extra stealth sources. You still bring no CC, no group utility, your rotation is harder than Scourge but now you don't even do much more damage. So why would you bring a Condition Deadeye over a meta condition build like Scourge, Rev, or Daredevil?

 

TLDR:

Post repeater nerf, in WvW you don't bother building for quickness and you have additional stealth sources in Shadow Arts. In PvE, the constant quickness application leaves you starved for initiative in a way that it did not pre patch, and part of this is down to the fact that alacrity does nothing for thief weapon skills like it does for other professions. This isn't a complaint, it's simply a side effect of the design of the thief class in the fact it has the initiative system. 

 

Edited June 15, 2021 by Jugglemonkey.8741

[Lucinellia.9247]

@Jugglemonkey.8741

Thank you for taking the time to write that post. It is excellent.

 

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

On 6/15/2021 at 8:20 AM, Lucinellia.9247 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741

Thank you for taking the time to write that post. It is excellent.

 

I'm just glad that someone took the time to read it xD

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

Is this mainly about sPvP and WvW ? because in PvE the build does 100k burst which is so bonkers that there is properly another nerf incoming.

[saerni.2584]

20 minutes ago, Lord of the Fire.6870 said:

Is this mainly about sPvP and WvW ? because in PvE the build does 100k burst which is so bonkers that there is properly another nerf incoming.

How is it doing 100k burst after two nerfs? 
 

I'd point out that on rifle DE you can easily hit upwards of 100k in vulnerability phases on PvE bosses. I've had 200k Death's Judgment critical hits during those times. 
 

P/D DE lost over 50% of its torment application with the change to Malicious Sneak Attack. So how is it hitting 100k? Genuine question. 

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

29 minutes ago, saerni.2584 said:

How is it doing 100k burst after two nerfs? 
 

I'd point out that on rifle DE you can easily hit upwards of 100k in vulnerability phases on PvE bosses. I've had 200k Death's Judgment critical hits during those times. 
 

P/D DE lost over 50% of its torment application with the change to Malicious Sneak Attack. So how is it hitting 100k? Genuine question. 

Well I can only say I saw it^^ on 99cm B1

[Lucinellia.9247]

2 hours ago, Lord of the Fire.6870 said:

Well I can only say I saw it^^ on 99cm B1

That is because of prestacked venoms as a result of Mistlock Singularity. This is available to cDD too and is not limited to cDE. 

However, that sort of burst is really not that impressive. Here is the cDE burst from the highest performing cDE on Wingman for Skorvald as of the 08/06 nerf. This is myself and I've definitely had higher burst yet overall DPS on those runs has been lower since opening burst does not define an encounter. That is a burst of 89k - I think you'd currently be hard pressed to reach 100k unless the rest of the DPS were struggling or the CC was slow or instabilities were wonderful.

Comparatively, here is the burst from the highest performing Slb for the same fight. That is almost 20k higher and it pushes the phase to finish 3 seconds earlier. Meanwhile, there are other condition options that can perform just as strongly. Here is cFB reaching close to cDE for first phase burst and yet because cFB is not reliant on prestacking to the same extent as cDE, the final damage of cFB is also higher. 

The 100k is likely not going to happen with current cDE. It can push 95k or so, but that relies on prestacked venoms, perfectly timed CC for when poison ticks, allies to actually apply venoms, favourable instabilities and allies to do less DPS than would be available if the played power. Even then, it is worse burst and overall DPS than Soulbeast (which can also deal with the adds reasonably - cDE cannot). 

There is a lot more going on that just "cDE bursts 100k nerf" and I implore people to actually use sites like Wingman now that it is available. Look at logs, look at why something might appear good on a specific portion of a specific fight despite performing badly holistically in other content such as raids.

 

[Lucinellia.9247]

But if you'd really like to see bonkers, and also understand why calling for any sort of nerf for cDE is wildly misplaced, the top performing cDE log (on Wingman) for Siaxx has 89k burst. This of course would decrease in any group with higher DPS from other members.

 

The top performing DH log for Siaxx (again, on Wingman) has 158k burst. The top performing Slb log for Siaxx is at 168k burst.

 

The idea that cDE burst is out of place or too strong is really quite misguided, especially when DH and Slb have been pulling numbers like this for well over a year.